6 Filmmaking Tips From Christopher McQuarrie

Advice from a master of the “Impossible.”

Christopher McQuarrie did not originally intend to be a filmmaker or even end up in Hollywood at all. But childhood friend and aspiring director Bryan Singer needed a writer, and two collaborations later, McQuarrie was going home with an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Usual Suspects. Five years after that, McQuarrie threw his hat in the directing ring with The Way of the Gun, which has since achieved cult status.

An eight-year absence ensued as McQuarrie attempted to get a (still unrealized) Alexander the Great passion project off the ground. His eventual comeback took the form of 2008’s Valkyrie, and with it, he found both a new niche in the world of mega-budget action films and a new winning creative partnership with Tom Cruise.

McQuarrie returned to directing in 2012 with the Cruise vehicle Jack Reacher, and has since become the new darling of Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise, helming 2015’s well-received Rogue Nation and then returning for Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which has received comparisons to the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road and The Dark Knight.

From interviews to commentary tracks to social media, McQuarrie is known for his blunt honesty, unabashedly pointing out continuity errors in his own films and laying bare his complaints about the studio system in which he works. Of course, such honesty also makes for some great advice, so here are six of his best filmmaking tips, compiled for your convenience.

Excitement, Not Gimmicks

As a director, one of McQuarrie’s calling cards is his ability to pull off sleek action sequences that pay homage to old-fashioned film artistry while still being exciting. Stunts that feel new yet stylistically have more in common with the gags of the great silent era comedians than with the fast-paced blurs typical of most 21st-century action sequences. And shot on 35mm film to boot.

McQuarrie elaborated on his approach to the visuals of his films in a 2015 interview with Film Comment: 

“Well, the first thing I try to communicate to my crew is that there will be no shaky-cam and no rack zooms, because those techniques are only used to hide the fact that there is no energy. When you eliminate those gimmicks you’re confronted with the reality of the shot you have in front of you, and nine times out of 10 you say to yourself: “This just isn’t working.” Then you have to find ways of infusing the shot with energy and excitement, and ask yourself what you can do to sustain the shot so that you’re not relying on staccato editing.”

Truth Is Never A Cliché

The 199os were full of insanely quotable genre films, from The Big Lebowski to Reservoir Dogs to The Matrix. Yet even with this tough competition, The Usual Suspects can still claim some of the most infectiously quotable lines of the era, including, of course, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”

While The Usual Suspects might be the most accoladed of McQuarrie’s screenplays, he’s shown a consistent knack for one-liners throughout his career. When asked by Creative Screenwriting about writing snappy one-liners while avoiding being cliché in the context of The Way of the Gun (which includes such lines as “A plan is a list of things that don’t happen” and “Karma is justice without the satisfaction”) McQuarrie responded:

“Truth is never a cliché. The plan line was all about the certainty of Alexander going to hell. The Karma line speaks to my hatred of revenge as reward, of immediate gratification and what it has done to story. There is no poetry in an eye for an eye, no real irony, and no lasting satisfaction. Thus, no justice. Movies tell us that justice is for the victim, but not for the offender. I believe otherwise. You may not agree, but it is my truth. You’ll get better lines if you write from that place every time.”

Something Can Always Go

Still in the realm of screenwriting advice, McQuarrie elaborated on the biggest lesson he learned from writing The Usual Suspects in a 2000 interview with PopMatters:

“What I learned from ‘The Usual Suspects’ was this: there was a whole sequence where the suspects arrive in LA from New York and have to introduce themselves to the LA crime scene so they can fence these jewels. The sequence shows them arriving, not knowing anybody, where they get the guns, and how they get the contacts, and it bonded all the characters and had one scene in it that I thought was the funniest scene I’d ever written at that point.

“And Bryan Singer read the script and said, ‘It’s all really good, but it’s 20 pages long. Why can’t McManus just know the fence, and we can cut all that out?’ I realized then that something can always go.”

Below is a video featuring a segment of McQuarrie and composer Joe Kraemer’s audio commentary track for The Way of the Gun, in which McQuarrie shares a similar tip: “Find what you’re trying to say, and don’t say it.”

The post 6 Filmmaking Tips From Christopher McQuarrie appeared first on Film School Rejects.